Glorior Belli is a band name that is on the lips of practically every Black Metal fan out there. But, this isn’t Glorious Belli…so to speak. 11 As in Adversaries was originally recorded with the full intent of being the fourth full-length release for the Black Metal act, but due to how experimental the album is, the band announced that it would be released as the first album under a side project called 11 As in Adversaries. This took many Black Metal fans back, but upon hearing this album, it’s blatently clear why the band decided to just acknowledge this effort as a whole other band and not associate it with their initial Black Metal group. Of course, one thing that has become painfully obvious over the years to many people is that, despite the band member’s lineage of well received material, it doesn’t necessarily mean that a new approach will be a good thing. Of course, The Full Intrepid Experience of Light kind of falls into this category.

This release is a very hard release to classify due to the experimental musical approach, but it can be broken down to concepts of Stoner Rock and Hard Rock mixed into an Avante-Garde approach with Noise and Psychadelic Rock thrown in, balanced out with a nice small measurement of Jazz. You can even get more technicaly throughout the release by really examining songs, such as by listening to “The Night Scalp Challenge” and hear a lot of Dillinger Escape Plan-like Math Metal in the closing guitars, but that might just be enough to cause your brain to overload. There’s so much going on in this CD, sometimes it’s hard to follow. Luckily, most of the tracks keep to the basic Stoner and Psychadelic Rock format, so it does wind up flowing from one song to another, rough as it may be.

The release is seperated into six tracks total that span over forty minutes, and some of the material seems to just go on for ages. Once you get past the initial shock of the concept of this album, there’s some fantastic moments on it that actually sound really good that you can get into, or even just kick back and relax to. For example, the title track “The Full Intrepid Experience of Light” is a rather enjoyable song, utilizing a laid back feeling through the drumming, against a rather technical guitar pattern that adds a nice Progressive and Psychadelic feeling to the music. The clean singing vocals are very reminiscent to classic bands that would fall under the Stoner Rock style monicker, and suits the music perfectly. The track flows nicely from it’s more Frankenstein monster machinery sound that sparks the song up, and slowly picks up until the pace of the song is established, and it just continues on until the start with very few changes in tempo. The music is well done, however, so that even with the somewhat repetitive guitars, there’s enough alterations in the chords throughout the fiften plus minutes of the song that it avoids seriously repetitive issues, the feeling of it just being drawn out, and becomes rather enjoyable, though a few times through may be required because of how diverse this musical approach is compared to many of the bands out there. However, it’s after this track that the band muddies the water, and the rest of the experience becomes more of a jumble, migraine-enducing mess, but luckily not all at once.

“Agitation in the Glorious Theme” incorporates some Jazz into the mix, and it does sound nice against the technical Avante-Garde feel of the material present on the album, though the fast paced guitar chords that appear through this song that go against the slower Jazz chords of the bass just wind up being abused after a while, and the last third of the song goes from a furious Jazz-like seizure to simply noise after a while, especially with the higher pitched guitar chords that ring out the song against what sounds like a phonograph recording of a talented saxophone player in the background. This carries into “The Night Scalp Challenger”, which features some very harsh vocals that sound like a more twisted lighter gutteral style against music one would expect to see in some kind of video production involved some kind of twisted carnival, or perhaps a film by Tim Burton. While this concept sounds promising, it just winds up not working and all sounds jumbled together, and eventually the music seems to just start going in various directions between the guitar and bass, though they really aren’t. The song also shifts in various different paces and approaches, giving off the sense of some kind of distorted reality or nightmare, and for that it works well, but in the long run there seems to be too many different musical ideas thrown together in this one song, and the somewhat Math Metal guitar chords that hit throughout the song, coupled with the Jazz bass and repetitive drumming that hits throughout, which is the only constant on the entire album, just pulls the listener in so many directions that it becomes overkill.

Verses from Which to Whirl” winds up being a completely different matter all together, and winds up being more enjoyable then the title track. This song takes a lot from the more experimental Black Metal and Post-Black Metal scene that is popping up, having a more emotionally driven atmosphere to the music. Of course, this track winds up clashing with the rest of the release, which is the farthest thing from anything Black Metal. This track is initially set up by “A Stealthy Freedom”, which just feels like a dismal, but drawn out instrumental track that lasts nearly two minutes, but once “Verses from Which to Whirl” actually kicks in, you’ll see that the instrumental in somewhat necessary, but perhaps not as long as it is on this release. It’s sad that it took so long for this track to kick in, and is perhaps one of the only songs on the release that actually feels whole without being cluttered by various ideas, and next to “The Full Intrepid Experience of Light”, it’s one of the only enjoyable tracks on here from start to finish, as well as doesn’t leave you asking why 11 As in Adversaries did whatever thing or things in the song that sound out of place.

The Full Intrepid Experience of Light makes for a good album for those looking to hear something unique, as it genuinely is a unique experience. The problem is that the release just tries too much, too hard, and it just doesn’t work out too well at all. While this release will clearly take some time to become adjusted to the overall Avante-Garde Experimental approach the band incorporated, there’s only two tracks on here that really will hold your attention, and they make up about half the album’s total time span, leaving “Agitation in the Glorious Theme” up to “Reckless Beacon’s Attraction” to be songs that approch a niche market, but even then may be too much for those to enjoy as it simply becomes too off the wall to stay consistant and enjoyable by any standards. Hopfully, if this side project continues, we’ll see more tracks like “Verses from Which to Whirl”, but expanded on a little more given the concepts utilized on here. There’s no denying that this project has the potential to be another band whose name would be on the lips of metal fans, but for now, it will be only due to the members and their musical history.